Rose glanced between them. ‘I’ve scheduled the two of you to work together on every shift right through the summer. I don’t need to tell you that the hospital management are scrutinising this department very closely. I know it’s going to be a fantastic success.’
Nikos dragged his gaze from Ella’s but somehow his eyes simply shifted to a different part of her, this time her abdomen. To the untrained eye her pregnancy wasn’t visible under the loose fabric of her scrub suit and yet he knew her so intimately that he could see the changes in her. Her glorious breasts were even fuller than usual, her hips more generously curved.
Cradling his child.
What would she have to say for herself?
What excuse would she give?
Was she one of these modern feminist women who wanted a baby but not a man?
His mouth tightened into a grim line as he pondered that possibility. If that was the case then she’d picked the wrong guy for a stunt like that. He was Greek. And she was about to discover exactly what that meant.
‘Just breathe normally, sweetheart,’ Ella soothed, her hand gently stroking the little girl’s head as she tried to relax the terrified child. ‘This mask is going to help you breathe.’
The little girl squirmed and clawed at the oxygen mask and Ella felt her heart contract as she tried to calm her. The poor child was terrified and her fear was making her condition worse.
Faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, Ella pushed her own problems to the back of her mind and concentrated on the job she was trained to do.
Moments after Rose had given her the keys to the drug cupboard, the department had suddenly been swamped with patients. A dog bite, two asthma attacks and a child who had slipped while scrambling over the cliffs and sustained a nasty laceration to his lower leg.
Denied any opportunity to dwell on the implications of Nikos’s presence, Ella had taken the most serious of the cases, a three-year-old girl with an acute asthma attack.
Thank goodness for training, she thought numbly as she adjusted the flow of oxygen and carefully observed the child’s breathing. It was only training that was allowing her to function as if nothing was wrong. Her hands were doing the right things and her mouth was saying the right things, but inside she was shocked and shaking.
After Helen’s confession, she’d cycled the brief distance along the canal to the hospital, her mind sifting through the various scenarios and how she’d handle them.
He’d come. Deep down, she’d known he’d come. And she’d decided that the most important thing was to stay calm and not allow emotion to play a part in their discussion. She’d be dignified and distant and keep the conversation focused on facts and nothing more. She’d find out what he wanted in terms of access and then go away and think about it. Nothing personal. She’d dismiss him as easily as he’d dismissed her.
At least, that had been the theory.
But how could any woman dismiss a man like Nikos Mariakos? How did you dismiss six feet two inches of strikingly good-looking, unwaveringly confident, muscle-packed male? Muscle-packed angry male.
Fortunately he’d gone with Rose to complete some paperwork, leaving Ella to work with Alan, a doctor with six months’ accident and emergency experience who was spending the next month in the paediatric department as part of his training. Alan was unfailingly polite and courteous and perfectly competent with the routine stuff that came through the doors of the main emergency department. Privately, Ella wasn’t sure he had the skill set to work with sick children, but she was hoping she’d be proved wrong.
So far three-year-old Tamsin had refused to allow him to listen to her chest, and nothing he tried could persuade her to co-operate. Flustered and out of his depth, the young doctor grew red in the face as he tried to reason with the child using a falsely bright voice.
Sensing his lack of confidence in a way that children always seemed able to do, Tamsin’s panic increased and she flailed her little arms, becoming more and more upset and making it harder for Ella to calm her.
‘Sweetheart, he’s not going to hurt you.’ Deciding that his presence was counter-productive, she discreetly waved a flustered Alan away from the trolley and picked up a doll from the toy box. ‘This is Angie, isn’t she beautiful? We’re going to put a dress on her and then give her some special air to breathe, just like you. Which dress do you think? You choose.’ She grabbed two dresses from the box and held them up. ‘Pink or purple?’